Wandering Billy

WANDERING BILLY

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Seas the Moment

Andy Zimmerman heads windward with a new documentary

By Billy Ingram

“That’s what sailing is, a dance, and your partner is the sea. And with the sea you never take liberties. You ask her, you don’t tell her.” ― Michael Morpurgo

Andy Zimmerman has performed a Herculean feat in transforming the downtown area south of the railroad tracks around Elm Street. What was once a losing hand of forgotten, abandoned buildings languishing for untold decades is today a royal flush of vibrant hubs where you’ll now find SouthEnd Brewing, transform GSO, Fainting Goat Spirits and Forge Greensboro among other former eyesores he’s renovated elsewhere.

I met with Zimmerman to explore his latest effort on the largely unfinished but impressive second floor of yet another recovery mission, the original Blue Bell jeans plant on South Elm and Gate City Boulevard (rechristened Old Greensborough Gateway Center). The hat he’s wearing today is not that of downtown developer but executive producer. He’s been working on an upcoming documentary entitled Mavericks & Multihulls, a tribute to the multihull legends of seafaring, those amazing young men and their sailing machines.

That’s not a non sequitur. The company Zimmerman founded and retired from before arriving in Greensboro a couple decades ago, Wilderness Systems, was a leader in the production and design of kayaks, “probably the No. 3 manufacturer in the world,” he notes. “Certainly No. 1 as it relates to brand. Between the companies that I owned and started, we made over a million kayaks.”

Under the WindRider label, Wilderness Systems fabricated more trimarans, a variation on the catamaran, than anyone anywhere. “The catamaran, as one of the designers likes to put it, is kind of a condo on the water — it’s commodious.”

“The trimaran has three hulls, the main hull, which is where you live,” Zimmerman points out for those who know little about watercrafts, aka me, “and then the two outriggers. You can call them training wheels,” making them faster and more stable than most other boats.

WindRider also manufactured hydrofoil sailboats, the cool, sleek models where the hull rises up out of the water at top speeds. “For me, it was a manufacturing accomplishment of a lifetime,” Zimmerman remarks about the difficulty of the build, which required some 800 components. The America’s Cup speedsters, he notes, “have trimmer ends, they’re doing 50 plus miles an hour in hydrofoils. The other boats we made money on, but the hydrofoil? No. It was the joy of creating.”

Questing for the creative is what led to his collaboration with Jim Brown, multihull sailing pioneer and high seas adventurer, as well as the impetus of this documentary. Mavericks & Multihulls chronicles the extraordinary lives of six sailing-world superstars, the aforementioned Brown, Woody Brown (no relation), Rudy Choy, Arthur Piver, James Wharram and Dick Newick.

Besides a shared connection with wind, waves and salty spray, Zimmerman points out that every one of the watermen spotlighted in this film was an extreme risk taker. “I met Jim [Brown] and was immediately attracted to his way of life,” he says. “Jim built a boat in his backyard. He took his two kids and his wife in Santa Cruz and said, ‘I don’t like the druggie scene here. I don’t like the Vietnam scene here. I wonder when the world’s going to blow up?’ And he said, ‘We’re getting on a boat.’” Brown and his family sailed the seas for three and a half years. “Went to Central America, South America and homeschooled his kids. Then came back when his wife said, ‘OK, I’m ready to get off the boat.’”

United Kingdom subject James Wharram was polyamorous, and some would call that alone off-the-charts bravery. “He’d have two, three women on his boat, they switched nights, they’d sleep together. This was back in the ’60s. Peace, love and waterbeds,” says Zimmerman. But the ultimate waterbed? “He turned people on to living on the water and adventure, traveling.”

While Wharram was all wild wanderlust — and just plain lust — Dick Newick was all about speed. “If he could take a pound out of the boat, he’d do it to make it go faster.”

Woody Brown, on the other hand, was a self proclaimed nature boy. “‘I want to be out in nature,’ he said,” quotes Zimmerman. “‘I don’t want motors, I want to sail.’” In that pursuit, he devised the first modern catamaran. “He reinvented the fin. He was a big surfer, too,” legendary, in fact. Living to the ripe age of 96, in his later years residing in Hawaii, Brown was a pioneer in chartering catamarans, taking groups of 40 or 50 people out on short oceanic sunset-viewing voyages.

Zimmerman recruited local filmmakers Michael Frierson and Kevin Wells, both with impressive documentary bona fides, to translate these stories to the big screen. To begin with, they conducted multiple interviews with Jim Brown, dating back to 2015. Many others who are passionate about sailing are featured, including Steve Callahan, who survived 76 days adrift in the Atlantic, and multihull designer and Mainer John Marples.

Frierson and Wells were busy editing when I spoke with them. “There’s an immense amount of footage shot by [Canadian cinematographer ] Scott Brown [again, no relation to Jim or Woody Brown]. That’s the primary source material from the current period,” Frierson says. In addition, Jim Brown contributed thousands of photographs along with 250 hours of footage he’d lensed over the decades.

The Mariners’ Museum and Park in Norfolk, the largest maritime museum in the country, made available their archives of motion-picture reels dating back to the dawn of the 20th century. “The footage is in every format known to man,” Wells notes. “Super 8, 16 mm film, DV cam video. So dealing with all the different resolutions has been challenging.”

Documentary filmmaking is like assembling pieces of a puzzle, or maintaining that fine line between devil and the deep blue sea, a rewarding yet daunting task crafting a narrative from random clips and pics shot by a multitude of unrelated individuals. “You’re finding the story out of all this,” Wells says about the challenging process to achieve an even keel. “You know there’s a story there — there’s probably a hundred stories there — but where is your focus? That part has been a lot of fun.”

What surprised Frierson and Wells most after diving into Mavericks & Multihulls (mavericksandmultihulls.com)? “That these guys were fairly accomplished carpenters,” Frierson replies. “They’re building their own boats and sailing them to Tahiti before GPS . . . The sense of self-reliance and guts that they had is just amazing.”

Wells concurs. “I think that’s representative of what a lot of these people think. They’re doing things, that to me, are extraordinary, but they think it’s very ordinary. Building these contraptions and sailing off with their family in the middle of the ocean is still crazy to me.”

“Jim Brown is 92. He lives life so large and he’s writing a book,” Zimmerman remarks with obvious admiration for the film’s unlikely leading man. “He just wants to stay busy and engaged in life. And I’m not sure I know anybody more engaged in life than Jim.” Legally blind now, Jim Brown can no longer navigate, but he’ll never fully surrender his life aquatic. With his own hands, no surprise, he’s constructed a tiny house on top of a trimaran, one manufactured by Zimmerman’s former company. “So he can keep his boat right there on the water at his house in Tidewater, VA. And he goes and stays in that when it’s not too hot or too cold.”

As for Zimmerman’s future, his mainsail is set for steering into the calm blue yonder. “I’ve got one big project left in me.” After that, his licked finger is in the wind. “I wouldn’t mind living on a boat. I’m a minimalist now. It goes back to the overwhelming sensation I had as a young man when I realized that freedom is actually available. I frickin’ love it!”

The Flying Gargoyles

THE FLYING GARGOYLES

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The Flying Gargoyles

Photographs by Tibor Nemeth

We sent photographer Tibor Nemeth to capture Gereensboro’s newest hockey team, the Gargoyles, warming up on the ice before their season kicked off in October. You can find the rest of their opening season schedule at gargoyleshockey.com.

Tea Leaf Astrologer

TEA LEAF ASTROLOGER

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Scorpio

(October 23 – November 21)

There’s a fine — and in your case, blurred — line between passionate and possessive. When Venus struts into Scorpio on Nov. 6 (where she’ll glamp out until month’s end), that line is primed to become a short leash if left unchecked — and nobody wants to be on the other end of that. A word of advice: Don’t smother the fire. Tempted as you may be to cling fast and tight, a little space will keep the coals glowing red hot.

Tea leaf “fortunes” for the rest of you:

Sagittarius (November 22 – December 21)

Stick to the recipe.

Capricorn (December 22 – January 19)

Pack a lint roller.

Aquarius (January 20 – February 18)

Thaw before cooking.

Pisces (February 19 – March 20)

Don’t overwork the potatoes.

Aries (March 21 – April 19) 

The shortcut won’t be worth it.

Taurus (April 20 – May 20)

Go easy on the garlic.

Gemini (May 21 – June 20)

Cling wrap, baby.

Cancer (June 21 – July 22)

The dishes are piling up again.

Leo (July 23 – August 22)

Shake the rug, darling.

Virgo (August 23 – September 22)

Dare you to bust out the fine china.

Libra (September 23 – October 22)

Serve yourself an extra slice of grace.

NC Surround Sound

NC SURROUND SOUND

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Sounds of a City

Music with a connection to place

By Tom Maxwell

Alex Maiolo is a creature of pure energy. It’s not that he talks fast or acts nervous — he’s simply an ongoing conversation about electronic music, geography and whatever else happens to capture his interest. He’s also a singular kind of globetrotter, one who doesn’t sound pretentious about it. He loves Estonia’s capital, Tallinn, so much he made music with the place, a 2021 conceptual performance he called Themes for Great Cities.

Conceived as one of his two main pandemic projects — the other was getting better at making pizza — the musical idea took on a life of its own even as the flatbread faded. He invited Danish musician Jonas Bjerre, Estonian guitarist and composer Erki Pärnoja and multi-instrumentalist Jonas Kaarnamets to collaborate. What resulted was something that felt improvised, unpredictable and exhilarating.

“Even though I was living in Chapel Hill, I was trying to think about, well, what do you miss when you miss a city?” he says.

The obvious things — favorite restaurants, familiar streets — were only part of it. Beneath that, Maiolo sensed a deeper, subconscious connection to place that might be expressed musically. He seized upon the idea of treating the city itself as a collaborator. “I wanted to write a love letter to this incredible city by gathering elements of it and assembling them in a new way,” he says. Sounds and light readings became voltages; voltages became notes. “Every synthesizer is just based on the assemblage of voltages,” Maiolo says. “So, if you have voltages — particularly between negative five and plus five volts — you can make music.”

The group collected source material across Tallinn: gulls shrieking overhead, rainwater rushing down a gutter, chatter in a market, the squeak of trams, cafeteria trays clattering at ERR (Estonia’s equivalent of the BBC). A custom-built light meter called the Mõistatus Vooluringid — “mystery circuit” — captured flickering light and converted it into voltages. These inputs were then quantized, filtered and transformed into sound. Tallinn became what Maiolo called “our fifth band member. And just like with any band member, you can say, ‘Hey, that was a terrible idea’ or ‘way to go, city — that was a good one.’”

From the outset, the goal was to create something that felt alive. “We wanted happy accidents,” Maiolo says. “Quite frankly, I wanted to be in a situation where something could go wrong.” Unlike a pre-programmed, pre-recorded synthesizer session, Themes for Great Cities was designed to court risk through completely live and mostly improvised performance — to create the same adrenaline rush that test pilots might feel, only with much lower stakes. “No one was going to crash,” Maiolo says.

That philosophy made the project’s debut even more dramatic. Originally slated for a 250-seat guild hall built in the 1500s, the show was suddenly moved to Kultuurikatel, a former power plant that holds a thousand. Then came another surprise: The performance would be broadcast live on Estonian national television, with the nation’s president in attendance. “It was far beyond anything I had imagined,” Maiolo admits. “I thought we were going to play to 30 people in a room.”

Visuals by Alyona Malcam Magdy, unseen by the musicians until the night of the show, added a surreal dimension. Estonian engineers captured the performance in pristine quality. “It all came together,” Maiolo says. “The guys I was doing this with are total pros.” The recording was later mixed and pressed to recycled vinyl at Citizen Vinyl in Asheville. Unable to afford astronomical mailing expenses, Maiolo split 150 LPs between Estonia and the United States, carrying them in his luggage.

Though imagined as a one-off, Themes for Great Cities continued to evolve. The group returned to Estonia in 2022 for a new performance in Narva, reworking parts of the score and staging it in a former Soviet theater. “We didn’t record that one because it was similar to the first. But when we do Reykjavik, we’ll record that one and hopefully release it,” he says. Yes, Iceland looks like the next destination. The plan is to work partly in the city and partly in the countryside, where light, landscape and weather can all feed into the music.

The ensemble has grown tighter, but Maiolo emphasizes the lineup will be flexible, with an eye toward incorporating local musicians. Vocals may be added in future versions, perhaps improvised or even converted into voltages to manipulate the electronics. “Anything is possible,” he says.

Though he now lives in San Francisco, Maiolo continues to think of North Carolina as part of his creative geography. He still has his house in Chapel Hill, stays connected to Asheville’s Citizen Vinyl, and carries his records home through RDU.

Maiolo and his partner of seven years, Charlotte, are to be married in Saint-Germain-des-Prés in Paris. Her father, a German who came of age during World War II, once spent a year in San Francisco immersing himself in jazz. Even now, as he struggles with dementia, he plays clarinet and listens to Fats Waller and Oscar Peterson. The sense of music as a lifelong companion, capable of anchoring memory and identity, is yet another thread running through Maiolo’s work.

Ultimately, what began as an experiment has become an ongoing series of collaborations. Each city brings its own textures, rhythms and surprises. Each performance is both a portrait and a partnership. “At the end of the day, it just kind of sounds like music,” Maiolo says nonchalantly, as if jamming with an entire city is an everyday thing.

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Trot Till You Drop

A mother and son’s Thanksgiving tradition

By Cassie Bustamante

Thanksgiving traditions? Everyone has ’em. Some families habitually sign up for the local turkey-trot races, dressed in matching tees with some cutesy saying like “First we run, then we eat” paired with fall-colored tulle skirts at their waists and coordinating, striped, knee-high socks. We are not that family.

And yet, in 2023, I ambush my oldest, 18-year-old Sawyer, begging him to turkey trot with his momma in the Greensboro Gobbler 5K. My motives are not entirely self-centered: A cross-country and track athlete when he graduated from Grimsley earlier that year, since then his sneakers have been collecting dust — not the kind kicked up on a trail.

An avid, albeit slow, runner myself, I know the benefits exercise has on my mental health. Trust me when I tell you that my family has many times breathed a sigh of relief when I hit the pavement. Of course, tell a teenager you think anything would be good for them and watch their eyes roll. Even if you can’t see the movement in their eye sockets — trust me — you can feel it.

Nevertheless, Sawyer oh-so-reluctanty agrees to join me in the race. I get to work training, suggesting that he do the same. And yet the weeks tick by without him so much as glancing at his Asics. But he’s a cross-country runner, after all, and confident that he can just wing it and be absolutely fine. Oh, to have that kind of confidence!

Race day arrives and we make our way to the starting line. Music blares on nearby speakers, families decked out in the aforementioned outfits huddle together and Davie Street thrums with energy. The gun goes off, and off we go. Within seconds, Sawyer’s feet swiftly take him way ahead of me. After less than a block, Sawyer’s gone from my line of vision and I know I won’t see him again until the end, but that’s OK. I am not trying to prove anything — to my son or to myself. Surprisingly, I cross the finish line a full minute and a half earlier than I’d expected and I feel great.

Smiling and panting, I scan the crowd for my son. Finally, I spot him. He’s fair-skinned as it is, but his face is as white as a ghost. I hate to call my own child pasty, but there’s no other word to describe him just then.

“Let’s take a selfie and commemorate this moment!” I say, excitedly whipping out my phone. He winces as I snap the photo and does a quick about face. “I don’t feel so good,” he ekes out. “I think I’m going to be sick.”

So, in the middle of downtown Greensboro’s Center City Park, Sawyer leans his head over a garbage can while I look around to make sure we aren’t in the background of anyone else’s photos.

As quickly as we can, we hop in the car and head home. Sawyer, gripping a half-drunk bottle of water, once again has color in his cheeks.

When we pull up in our driveway five minutes later, the lucky teenager has bounced right back as if nothing out of the ordinary happened. He turns to me before opening his car door and says, “Well, Mom, I think we’ve just started a new tradition.”

“I’d love that! And maybe next year we can get fun outfits,” I say, already picturing them in my head and wondering if I can run with a heavy stuffed-turkey hat on my head.

“Not happening,” he says, quickly squashing that dream. “But next year I might train a little bit.” 

Birdwatch

BIRDWATCH

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The Powerful Fox Sparrow

Large, handsome and hard to spot

Sparrows are a common sight throughout central North Carolina in winter. Historically, eight different species could be found in a day across the Sandhills and Piedmont. The gregarious, prolific and very adaptable house sparrow was added to the mix in the 1800s by early settlers who yearned for a familiar bird from the Western Hemisphere — as well as a means to control insect pests associated with human habitation.

At this time of year, the largest and most handsome of the sparrows is inarguably the fox sparrow. It’s also one of the hardest species to find. Perhaps because of its size and brighter coloration, it is frequently hidden in the vegetation. The fox sparrow is typically over 8 inches in length and very stocky, with bold rufous streaking on its underparts. From the head down the back to the tip of the tail it is a “foxier” reddish in color. Several races of the fox sparrow exist in the U.S. and Canada, with those found farther west being browner all over.

The fox sparrows that we see in winter breed from northern Ontario east to Newfoundland and south into parts of Nova Scotia. They move south in fall and start to appear in North Carolina in October. They seem to flock loosely with other sparrows and finches during the colder months. They prefer habitat that is immediately adjacent to water. Although they eat mainly insects during the summer, in winter seeds and berries tend to make up much of their diet.

More often than not, fox sparrows can be found in expanses of bottomland forest, kicking vegetation and debris for food, though there are lucky backyard birdwatchers who regularly observe them taking advantage of millet and other small seeds under their feeders. During very cold and wet weather, they may move farther into drier areas in search of a meal. I don’t usually see them where I live unless it snows — our predominantly grassy yard is too open to appeal to them. However, we have wet woods with dense tangles of evergreen vegetation not too far away.

Because of their size, fox sparrows are quite strong and capable of uncovering food that is buried deep in the forest floor. They will actually use both feet together to scratch and dig beyond the reach of other small birds. If you are out in wet habitat — or if you check under your feeders after a mid-winter snowfall — you may be treated to a glimpse of one of these handsome and powerful birds.

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Bad, Bad Baby

He’s the one to blame

By Cynthia Adams

Some years ago, I bought a blue-eyed, Gerber-perfect baby boy. With molded blonde curls, an upturned nose, and wide eyes, his expression features bow-like lips, opened slightly, frozen in permanent surprise.  

My baby is a cherubic-looking bust. Picture a 1950s-era doll head. He presides over my work life.

It soon struck me that those rosebud lips were parted just enough for a cigarette.

Which, I discovered, they handily accommodated. 

The ciggie, a fake one I’ve used in a cigarette holder when I dressed as a flapper for a Halloween party, appears lighted. This took Gerber baby to another dimension. Unexpected. Unsettling.

There and then he became Bad Baby, official muse. Bad Baby, office mascot.  

Bad Baby has presided over many false starts and rewrites. He sits right above my computer, where Bad Baby never fails to make me smile when I need it. An artist friend, Dana, was particularly delighted when she popped into my office and spotted Bad Baby, who is parked beside a primitive painted folk-art bus with “Guanajuato” scrawled on it. 

The most compelling thing about the bus is the various clay figures of passengers. It’s difficult to say exactly what the crudely formed figures are doing, their arms raised in a gesture of helplessness, but it is appears they are trying to bail out. One figure stands on top of the hood and two on the roof, with others at the rear, appearing ready to leap into the unknown. I like the irony.  

Who hasn’t felt like bailing? Who hasn’t had feet of clay? I identified with the hapless figures wanting to exit.

Dana has no shortage of creative projects. So, when I confessed to having a creative dry spell, she laughed.

“Blame it on Bad Baby,” she drawled. Problem solved!

Bad Baby as scapegoat.  

Bad Baby is responsible for many things in my daily life. Typos. Missing the postal carrier when something needs to go out. Buying a greeting card and bungling the address.

Hangnails. Hangovers.   

When my iPhone texts were hacked (something that Apple aficionados suggest cannot happen), it didn’t occur to me to blame Bad Baby for the psycho-gibberish, disturbing rant, given he has no texting fingers.  

The recipient, a good friend, believed I had actually sent them. He asked his colleague to find out what had so provoked me. 

No, I assured her, I had sent no such messages. Yet there they were, on my phone.  

Also embarrassing? Misspellings, poor grammatical construction, and lack of sense. Worse, too, that a friend would think that a writer sent something so garbled. 

With red hot cheeks, I erased the texts (wouldn’t that make sense?), urged my friend to do the same, and dialed Apple support, immediately learning they needed the texts to trace the source.   

Calls are spoofed. Seems texts are as well.

So, a few months later, I flinched when Dana reacted to a jokey text, responding that I was a filthy animal.  

Was this real? Or had she also been hacked? Or had I been hacked again?

Shaken, I phoned her. She snorted, saying her text was merely a joke, a riff borrowed from the flick, Home Alone. Explaining how unnerved I’d been since the texting spoof, she snorted again.

“Blame it on Bad Baby,” my friend suggested again and laughed.

Just in case you’re wondering, Bad Baby is my invention. The OG. Turns out there is a 20-year-old rapper, Danielle Peskowitz Bregoli, who assumed the name Bhad Bhabie. I firmly believe my Bad Baby predates her Bhad Bhabie.  

And I like old-school spellings far better. No phat bhabie nor brat bhabie for me. Just plain old, conventional, ciggie-puffing Bad Baby.

“You can be too old for a lot of things, but you’re never too old to be afraid,” seems apropos, another line borrowed from Home Alone. Some are frightened by dolls — an actual phobia called pediophobia. 

An inexplicable text that appears to be from me but isn’t? That scares me.

And so, now I sit, scowling with narrowed eyes at Bad Baby, afraid to wonder just what havoc he might wreak next. But — if you should get a text rant from Bad Baby, please ignore it.

Almanac October 2025

ALMANAC

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Almanac October

By Ashley Walshe

October is an ancient oak, quiet and delighted.

“Come, sit with me,” he whispers gleefully. “We’re nearly to the best part.”

The air is ripe with mischief and mystery. Can you smell the soil shifting? Feel the seasons turning in your bones?

Come, now. Rest at the roots of the mighty oak. Press your back against the furrowed bark and listen.

Goldenrod glows in the distance. Blackgum and sourwood blush crimson. A roost of crows howls of imminent darkness.

“Of course,” breathes the oak, hushed and peaceful. “But the darkness only sweetens the light.”

As a swallowtail sails across the crisp blue sky, birch leaves tremble on slender limbs; a crow shrieks of wet earth and swan songs.

You close your eyes, feel the vibration of sapsucker rapping upon sturdy trunk.

“Do you feel that?” you ask the oak.

“I feel everything,” he murmurs.

When you open your eyes, the colors are different. The green has been stripped from poplar and maple, reds and yellows made luminous by the autumn sun. 

At once, the great oak shakes loose a smattering of acorns.

“Watch this,” he softly chuckles, sending the gray squirrels scurrying.

A sudden rush of wind sends a shiver down your spine. Leaves descend in all directions, wave after fluttering wave, in kaleidoscopic glory.

The goldenrod is fading. The sunlight, too. The swallowtail,
gone with the wind.

“Things are getting good now,” smiles the oak, his mottled leaves gently rustling.

You sense your own soil shifting. Feel the sweet ache of new beginnings. Let yourself drop into ever deepening stillness.

Soup’s On

It’s winter squash season. As the autumn days shift from crisp to chilling, what could be sweeter — or more savory — than roasted delicata, cinnamon-laced and fork tender? Acorn squash tart with maple, ricotta and walnuts? Cream of squash soup (butternut or kabocha) served with a crispy hunk of sourdough?

And let’s not forget pumpkin (and pumpkin spice) mania. It’s all here. Enjoy!

Center of the Cosmos

Until the first frost arrives — weeks or days or blinks from now — delicate blossoms sway on tall, slender stems, brightening the garden with color and whimsy.

Hello, cosmos.

One of October’s birth flowers (marigold, the other), cosmos are said to symbolize harmony and balance, their orderly petals having inspired their genus name. Native to Mexico, this daisy-like annual thrives in hot, dry climes. It’s the traditional flower for a second wedding anniversary gift and, according to The Old Farmer’s Almanac, was once thought to attract fairies to the garden.

Could be true. Just look how the butterflies take to them.

Wandering Billy

WANDERING BILLY

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Picture This

Mac Barnett’s illustrated children’s books draw on connections between generations

By Billy Ingram

“There are perhaps no days of our childhood we lived so fully as those we spent with a favorite book.” 
— Marcel Proust

Is there a beloved storybook you fondly recall being read to you as a child? For me, it was Pat the Bunny by Dorothy Kunhardt. Credited with being the very first interactive book, it offered tots a “touch and feel” experience in lieu of a narrative. Bound with white plastic ribbing, each turn of its pages reminded toddlers of everyday experiences, like feeling Daddy’s stubble (a schmear of sandpaper), inhaling the scent of wild flowers, playing peek-a-boo with a patch of cloth and patting an upright, bunny-shaped fluff of faux fur.

For lovers of children’s pictorial storybooks, there’s something really special happening this month. Out of 380 proposals submitted by cities around the nation, Greensboro was one of only five boroughs selected to host the Library of Congress’ National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature, Mac Barnett. The ninth to hold this title, he will be presenting Behold, The Picture Book! Let’s Celebrate Stories We Can Feel, Hear, and See, his tribute to the colorful legacy of children’s literature.

Barnett has authored 62 books for youngsters (he estimates) and has received two Caldecott Honors, three New York Times/New York Public Library Best Illustrated Awards, three E.B. White Read Aloud Awards — the accolades go on and on. Now in its second season on Apple TV+, he’s the co-creator, with illustrator Jon Klassen, of Shape Island, an animated series based on their New York Times-bestselling graphic novels for toddlers, The Shapes Trilogy, cloud-seeding infantile imaginations while simultaneously encouraging critical-thinking skills.

Barnett’s The First Cat in Space series, in collaboration with illustrator Shawn Harris, is rendered in a sparkling, modern style with a subtle hat tip to comic artist Jack Kirby’s square-fingered, forced perspective. “Shawn and I have been friends since we were 6 years old,” the author reveals. “And now Shawn is one of the finest children’s illustrators working today. When I was a kid, I loved comic strips like Calvin and Hobbes and Garfield.” Admittedly intimidated by the superhero genre, he says, “Shawn read all that stuff and he would explain to me a run of Spider-Man or what was happening to Superman and I would get it all filtered through him.” No dust on these jackets, infectiously fusing a Calvin-ism whimsy with 1980s Marvel super-heroic showmanship, the resulting outta-sight escapades of this far-out feline are what The New York Times proclaims “hilarious.”

For early readers eager for enigmatic entertainment, Barnett’s Brixton Brothers whodunnits serve as a mod nod to circa 1960s Hardy Boys mysteries. School Library Journal declares Brixton Brothers’ premiere volume, The Case of the Case of Mistaken Identity, “one of the funniest and most promising series openers in years.” The author’s attraction to those juvenile novels written long ago is rooted in the macabre. “As a kid, I was terrified of being kidnapped,” he quips, “and the Hardy Boys get kidnapped like three times per book.”

Barnett was especially fascinated by the sleuthing siblings’ escape strategy after being tied up. “They would flex their muscles, the bad guys would leave the room; then, they would relax their muscles and the ropes would just fall to the ground,” he recalls. “And I was like, this is what I am going to do when I get kidnapped.” To test this technique, in second grade he convinced Harris to secure him with a jump rope using knots Harris had learned in the Boy Scouts. “I relaxed and, of course, the ropes just stayed there. And I realized the Hardy Boys worked out a lot harder than I did at age 7.” This eventually formed the genesis for his Brixton Brothers’ exploits “about a kid who tries and fails to be a Hardy Boy.”

There is unambiguous, statistical information that reading to children has a lifelong educational impact. “The picture book is one of the great American art forms,” Barnett insists. “And reading out loud to kids is an intergenerational, artistic experience — an adult and a kid coming together over artwork, experiencing it, having feelings about it, and then, hopefully, talking to each other about whether they like it, what they think it means.”

According to Barnett, the first illustrated storybook for kids was Wanda Gag’s Millions of Cats in 1928. “There were books for children before that, primarily though, they were illustrated nursery rhymes, Bible stories, folk tales.” Gag pioneered the use of text and pictures in tandem to tell a story.

“The first book that I really remember living inside of was In the Night Kitchen.” Barnett discovered the absurdist dreamworld of Maurice Sendak as a youngster in the early 1980s. “It just made perfect sense to me. This is what it’s like inside my brain, that recognition of a kindred consciousness. And you read it as an adult and you’re like, this is such a wild experimental text.”

If offered the opportunity, I think just about anyone would write a children’s book. What advice can Barnett offer? “You’ve got to learn how picture books work,” he contends. “This is a way of telling stories in a very specific way. It’s easy to write a picture book, it’s very difficult to write a great picture book. And the first step is to learn the history of the art form to really understand how stories are told this way.”

Here’s an opportunity to do just that. The free event, Behold, The Picture Book! Let’s Celebrate Stories We Can Feel, Hear, and See, will be held at 10 a.m, Saturday, October 25, in N.C. A&T State University’s Harrison Auditorium. While he’s in the ’Boro for two days, Barnett will also host programs at area schools, where every student will receive one of his endlessly engaging picture books donated by Candlewick Press (as will the young ones attending the Harris Auditorium celebration, courtesy of Greensboro Bound).

“Greenboro just had an incredible proposal,” Barnett says about the selection process coordinated between The Library of Congress and Every Child a Reader, a literacy charity. “They were looking for communities with strong libraries and bookstores to make sure that these events were of value to the community. A big part of this is talking to adults about why kids’ books matter, why they are real literature and how to make sure that kids have good books to read.” He believes that, for Greensboro, “it’s just a great opportunity to talk to educators, families and even kids about the value of children’s literature in a young person’s life.”

Award-winning American (and sometimes) children’s author Emilie Buchwald (Gildaen: The Heroic Adventures of a Most Unusual Rabbit) once observed, “Children are made readers on the laps of their parents.” True, it’s never too soon to fold back colorful covers and expose spongy youngsters to worlds of wonder and limitless curiosity. Or just to pet the fluffy cartoon bunny.

For information about the free public event, visit greensborobound.com. Registration is strongly encouraged.

Poem October 2025

POEM

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October 2025

Little Betsy

A ghost is no good to a child.

Maybe he crooks a finger, as if to beckon

the girl to play. Maybe he bounds spritely

down corridors, into kitchens.

But if she hands him a dolly or ball

and he reaches with his spectral hand,

he cannot clutch the gift, and if his failed grasp

surprises him, if the lack of resistance —

for everything real resists the touch —

unbalances him, his incorporeal fingers

might graze the child’s offering hand.

What would you call the gooseflesh

raised by the frolicsome dead?

There is no joy in it, only a deep well

of longing cold, the kind that claws

through every crack in the wall.

— Ross White